Whatsapp for Nokia 8110 4G reportedly in development?!

The feature phone market won’t die anytime soon, in fact, things are getting more interesting there everyday, because of new manufacturers, software makers and technologies being pushed to make the feature phones “smarter”. There is a huge market for feature phones from customers that don’t want a smartphone, cannot afford a smartphone or want to have a simple and reliable backup device. The latest trend in feature phones is 4G, with the last year’s announcement of Jio phone in India, and this year’s HMD’s announcement of Nokia 3310 4G in China and Nokia 8110 4G globally, that should be available in May.

Both, the Jio phone and the new 8110 4G use KaiOS as their operating system, that already supports popular services like Facebook, Twitter, Google Assistant, Search, Maps etc. Wabetainfo.com reports that in the latest WhatsApp beta for Windows Phone 2.18.38 references about the development of a KaiOS app had been spotted. We don’t want to jump to any conclusions just yet, but this indicates that Facebook is developing a Whatsapp app for KaiOS, and that shouldn’t surprise us considering that a native Facebook app is already present on KaiOS and that the market share of KaiOS-running feature phones is expected to increase in coming years.

If you’re wondering why is Whatsapp so important, it is, after all, the most used messaging app on the planet. And as you can see on the map made by Similarweb above, important markets in Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa are dominated by Whatsapp (in green). North America is more a Facebook Messenger market, as well as Australia.

Would a Whatsapp-supporting feature phone make you leave your smartphone behind, at least partially? Tell us down below. 🙂